Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Another Thought for Thursday Evening

The debates this year have had a lot of "raise your hand" questions — like "Raise your hand if you believe in evolution" or "Raise your hand if you agree that the U.S. should use military force to stop genocide in Darfur." Here's the "raise your hand" question I'd like to see asked of both the Democratic and Republican candidates...

Raise your hand if there's a candidate on this stage who you would not enthusiastically endorse and support if they won the nomination of your party.

No, I don't think it would be fair, either. But it sure might make things interesting.

• Posted at 11:36 PM · LINK

A Thought for Tuesday Evening

Part of me would like to see the Democratic presidential nomination go to Hillary Clinton and the Republican nomination to Rudy Giuliani.

I don't really want either of them to win. I'm not even of the mind that either would make a good president. I just think it would be great to have a debate where she was wearing one of her pants suits and he was wearing one of his dresses.

• Posted at 11:01 PM · LINK

Recommended Reading

Glenn Greenwald on how George W. Bush believes he is immersed in a war of Good versus Evil, and since he represents the Good, any damn thing he thinks he should do is therefore presumed to be Good.

• Posted at 8:56 PM · LINK

Today's Video Link

One of the superstars of Los Angeles radio and TV in the fifties was a very funny, witty man named Jim Hawthorne, who hosted a wide array of programs in both venues. His work is treasured today by many who followed him back then, back when he was often mentioned in sentences that included the names of Ernie Kovacs and Steve Allen. Mr. Allen was a special fan of Hawthorne's work and sometimes credited him for inspiring certain bits that turned up on The Tonight Show during its Allen years.

Hawthorne's radio style, which you'll see him employing to less advantage on TV in today's presentation, involved a steady stream of odd audio clips interrupting him or sometimes acting as punctuation marks to his monologues. I don't think he invented this but an awful lot of radio personalities picked it up from him and used the idea on their shows. They also used a lot of his comedy material. He was like Bob and Ray on the East Coast, doing great comedy for a local audience...so radio guys in other cities felt it was relatively safe to pilfer his routines and jokes.

Hawthorne had various TV shows, including one where he just gave the weather report. He also had a brief film career, mostly in the form of an early and unsuccessful attempt to make a new star comedy team out of him and Joe Besser. But mostly, he did radio and he did it very well...or so I remember. Vaguely. I'm just barely old enough to have experienced his later work.

Our clip today is not him at his best. It's a piece of a TV pilot he did in the early seventies, for some reason foregoing most of the visual humor of his earlier TV shows to do what is basically a televised version of his radio format. Still, it may be the only Hawthorne clip you'll ever see since, as he laments on his website (yes, he's still around), almost none of his radio or TV work still exists today...which may be the reason more people haven't heard of him. Here's Hawthorne...

• Posted at 1:06 AM · LINK